Recommend me a graphics card

Eiji

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I currently have a GeForce FX 5200 128MB which I bought in Sept 2003 for £50 because my GeForce 2 Ti bit the dust and I needed a gfx card fast.

For gaming, the FX 5200 doesn't cut it IMO.

Anyway, here are my CORE system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512MB KINGMAX PC2700 DDR333 RAM
ASUS A7V333 Motherboard (AGP 4x only I believe)

I would like you all to recommend me a graphics card that wouldn't be held back by my system like a 6800GT since it wouldn't be a good choice for my system because I believe the processor and ram are bottlenecks for a monstrous card like that.

Links to competitively priced gfx cards on UK retailer sites are also welcome.

Thanks.
 
ATI 9800 Pro (ATI, sapphire, powercolor name branded are all fine) will be a good match for your system. It will play all the latest games reasonbly well with high graphic detail levels.

The Nvidia 6800 family are good cards but probably not worth it with your PC except maybe for the straight 6800 (not ultra or GT).

Now that I answered your question, something to think about. Your computer is getting a little on the old side. Are you sure you want to get a video card to match it? Or would you be better off getting a video card to match your next MB/CPU?

The 9800 Pro/XP2000 combo will be ok for this year, but what about next year? Think about it before commiting your money. Be warned you may need a new power supply if you go for a 6800 family card. Even the 9800 Pro could push your old power supply.

If the power supply is an enermax or antec power supply 300W is ok. If it's another brand post the current ratings on the PSU label for the +5V, +12V and +3.3V. Also any restriction on combined load for those three voltages.
 
ATI Powercolor 9600 Pro is a good cheap choice for the interim. They can be had on the cheap and will run DirectX9 for the newer games. I just picked one up on eBay for $50.00 U.S. and put it into my old system that one of my daughters is now using (AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz CPU on an Abit KT7A-Raid MoBo which BTW is only 4x AGP). You may loose some frame rate anyway you slice it due to the AGP 4x. Plus your MoBo is and AGP Pro slot board (An AGP card will work in an AGP Pro slot, however the card must have a registration tab. Most if not all the newer APG cards are universal AGP cards with the 3.3v key and the 1.5v key). But that's not really that important. I just threw that in. :D Also if money is a problem, maybe a GeForce 6600GT. They are cheaper than their big brother the 6800, run extremely well with all the new games and if you upgrade your MoBo in the near future (within the next 6 months :p), ya just pull it out and plug it into yer new board and go. But you really may want to consider a full upgrade seeing as you want to play the newest games. Anything of the older AMD Athlon XPs not faster than a 2.0 GHz is going to be a bit over worked IMHO. Memory bandwidth is also going to be a problem.

I think your best bet at this moment is to rethink your upgrade and maybe do a used video card. An FX 5700 or any of the ATi 9600 9700 or 9800s. They can all be had on eBay for cheap. But that's just me mind you. So, think it over.
 
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I had the same mobo less than a month ago, and I can tell that the A7V333 is AGP 8x (and 4x, 2x of course ;) ) compliant and my video card is a Powercolor 9800 Pro, both worked just fine together ;)
For info, the Ati Sapphire 9800 Pro can be found at around 150€ (euros) here in FroggyLand.
 
As Leejend mentioned already...
I do think it's time to make a major upgrade on your machine if you're wanting to get into some serious gaming. The Nvidia 6800 series is probably the best you can get for the time-being. But not worth going for top of the range if you're planning to stick to the current system you have since it's likely to restrict the performance.
 
Howling Wolf said:
I had the same mobo less than a month ago, and I can tell that the A7V333 is AGP 8x (and 4x, 2x of course ;) ) compliant and my video card is a Powercolor 9800 Pro, both worked just fine together ;)
For info, the Ati Sapphire 9800 Pro can be found at around 150€ (euros) here in FroggyLand.


I hate to tell you but the A7V333 is a AGP Pro 4x only

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/asus_a7v333/2.shtml

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=58&catid=3

(scroll down to "Expansion Slots" on both links)

Now there is an A7V333-X also. But the AGP slot is still a 4x only, but not an AGP Pro.

http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A7V333-X&langs=09
 
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maybe wolfman has another kind of A7V333, who knows :)
 
Maybe... :)


But as for Eiji's question. It's interesting that ATi had better "middle of the road" Vid Cards (9600 9700 9800) than nVidia (FX5500 FX5700 FX5900). I still think that it would be better to save up and do the full upgrade. That's what I did. It took a while and I couldn't play any of the newest games. I tried the demos but Vid Card was lacking on frame rate. Plus 4x AGP... I also had an FX, an FX5900SE.
 
I'm in the same boat brother! In fact that's why I'm stopping in. I'm still running an MSI 4600/128 card :dead:

I've been reading everything I can on full upgrades, and I hate upgrading. Well, I love it because I get all types of new power... but I hate making the decisions.

I'm running a Asus p4pe 2.6/533
1g 2700 ddr
and a few SATA seagates raid0...

My considerations so far, is going with a SLI mobo, and maybe getting some 6800GTs. Probably one to start out with since I'm poor.

I really love Intel, and being a fan and reading specs on the FX line makes me cry. So far it seems the 600 line of Intel chips is no going so well... The jump to 64 is a given for me: have to do it. I just have a feeling that as soon as I decide, the FX line will become dated, and when longhorn comes out, things might not look so pretty for AMD. I'm speculating on my luck if I go with AMD.

But I digress. Being in the same situation as you, I've decided on a full system upgrade. Surprisingly, I can run all new games fine at 1024x768 with some eye candy on, but I'm missinng out on the greater candy. Since I'm only an agp 4x I can't justify in my head spending money on a newer agp card. I know that there isn't much of a differnce between the 4 and 8x at this moment due to game design, but the future is hard to predict. That being said, and being that my chip/mobo/ram is quite dated, minds as well upgrade everything and move to PCIe.

I know there are mobos out there that are hybrids (pcie and agp), but honeslty I haven't been checking out their review greatly.

So bottom line in all my babbling, is do a full system update if ya can afford it. I'm stocking up on Raman and Hotpockets to save my pennies, but in the long run I think its the best bet for us.
 
I don't really know about doing a full upgrade.

That'd set me back £500 or so for the mobo (PCI-E), cpu, ram and gfx card (PCI-E).

I don't game too much on the PC but would like to play the major titles like Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3 with acceptable frame rates and detail @ 1280x1024.

How would my rig handle the aforementioned games paired with a FX5900 or a ATI 9800 @ 1280x1024?
 
gonaads said:
I hate to tell you but the A7V333 is a AGP Pro 4x only

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/asus_a7v333/2.shtml

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=58&catid=3

(scroll down to "Expansion Slots" on both links)

Now there is an A7V333-X also. But the AGP slot is still a 4x only, but not an AGP Pro.

http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A7V333-X&langs=09

Me bad... true, the A7v333 is AGP 4x only... I had it... before the one I still had less than a month ago, the A7v600 which is AGP 8x ;)
I now have the A7v880, AGP 8x, of course ;)
Sorry for the confusion...
 
Well, just to give you an idea of how much it is going to cost me for a major upgrade to 6800 series, with AMD64 and 1GB ram - £700+ :p

I wouldn't be upgrading, but am forced to because I'm only getting between 9-49 fps in CSS. A small upgrade on the GPU is unlikely to make major improvements as the cpu also affects the performance.
 
Eiji said:
I don't really know about doing a full upgrade.

That'd set me back £500 or so for the mobo (PCI-E), cpu, ram and gfx card (PCI-E).

I don't game too much on the PC but would like to play the major titles like Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3 with acceptable frame rates and detail @ 1280x1024.

How would my rig handle the aforementioned games paired with a FX5900 or a ATI 9800 @ 1280x1024?


Frame rates would be not good. You will prolly get choppy play and when da shiit gets thick in da game (all the bad guys attackin you all at once and you unloading and reloading yer weapon like a mad man :p) it will slow down a bunch and almost look like it's goin in slow motion. And @ 1280x1024... forget it, It ain't gonna happen. If you could find a used MoBo that has an 8x AGP slot that supports yer CPU (most if not all of the 8x AGP AMD boards support the Athlon XP CPUs in all flavors) on the cheap the go for a FX5900 or ATi 9800 and just add more DDR memory to yer system. You have 512MB KINGMAX PC2700 DDR333 RAM ATM, so drop in another 512MB.

I upgraded to an Asus A8V Deluxe with 1GB Corsair ValueSelec and an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and an Antec TruePower 430 watt PSU. Then a few weeks later I went and got a BFG 6600GT. Then a couple of weeks after that I went and got another (1)GB of Corsair ValueSelec memory. So I've dropped around 9 "large" (hundred U.S.) give or take a few dollars on the entire upgrade. I ain't cheap and it all depends on what you want to do and are willing to spend. Plus how much you have to spend. I waited quite a while before I was able to do this.

[edit]
Now the main reason I bit the bullet and payed through the nose :p and upgraded, is that my MoBo will support any 939 pin Athlon 64 out there, even the kick ass FX55. And with a BIOS update the next FX CPU also. So i'm covered for a while. And also any newer AGP 8x that comes out. I thought of the PCI express but rite now AGP is pretty much at the same speed except for the hardcore gamers and their SLi setups. I might be kicking myself later on, but I don't think so.

It's hard when ya got some money to spend but it's not enough for that killer setup ya want. So you have to juggle everthing and see what you come up with. And then you gotta see if it's worth it to do it, or wait and save up more money.

Worse thing is when you finally go down to the computer shop/store and begin you run at the items you want, you see all the newest stuff then ya look back at the stuff you were thinking of getting and then... <insert pause and deep breather here> ... <insert brain fart here> ya wind up walkin out of the place with the newest stuff and an empty bank account. :p
 
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I might just wait a bit more and go for a big upgrade later this year or go for the Xbox 360 :D

I could go all out and spend a bomb load on a PC but I have other responsibilities and the wifey wouldn't be too happy with me splashing a load on a PC.
 
Eiji said:
I might just wait a bit more and go for a big upgrade later this year or go for the Xbox 360 :D

I could go all out and spend a bomb load on a PC but I have other responsibilities and the wifey wouldn't be too happy with me splashing a load on a PC.


Splash da cash on yer PC and get somethin for da Mrs too... A cheaper PC for her, a ring/necklace/jewelry and flowers, a short vaction/trip together... :rolleyes: Anything to get yours. :p
 
ming said:
Don't be like gonaads by paying through your nose. :p


Yeah, it's painfull pullin them hundreds through there. :D
 
ok i think it seems clear he DOES NOT want to upgrade fully, fine its his choice, i also disagree with what a lot of you say about the speed factor, i actually had a slightly slower machine:

amd 2400 1.8ghz
512mb 2700
5600 (upgraded it to 6800)
nforce 3 gigbyte board it was 8x agp)

now the far cry ran fine at high specs hl2 was fine at high specs and doom was fine a high specs. But as my sys a while back was similar to this guys and i KNOW for a fact these games where more than playable at those specs i don't see why he should not just upgrade.

And i would certainly recommend getting the Evga 6800 which is what i got and i loved it, even my old 5600 ran thoses games between low to med specs.

So in conclusion yes if you just want to play those games and you don't want to upgrde for whatever reason (your money so who cares), then getting a 9800 or 6800(which is what i do suggest), would be perfectly fine.

[Edit]

Just noticed you have a 2000xp, hmmm ok i'll change my stance a litte, it should all run fine, but i would err on the side of at least upgrading your cpu to a 2800 or something its only $100 if you mobo can support it. if not just buy the v/card and see what happens.
 
Eiji said:
I might just wait a bit more and go for a big upgrade later this year or go for the Xbox 360 :D

I could go all out and spend a bomb load on a PC but I have other responsibilities and the wifey wouldn't be too happy with me splashing a load on a PC.

I doubt she would be pleased with you splashing your load on the pc, no doubt she'd prefer some for herself. :laugh::laugh::laugh:







I'm sooooo gonna get banned for my posts haha
:speechless:
 
lancer said:
I doubt she would be pleased with you splashing your load on the pc, no doubt she'd prefer some for herself. :laugh::laugh::laugh:







I'm sooooo gonna get banned for my posts haha
:speechless:

*places finger on "ban" button*


How much money you got? :devious:
 

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